Friday, September 30, 2011

So in the copious amounts of spare time I don't really have these days I recently got the 3.0 kernel working on my Sony Vaio system. In the wonderful world that is Linux kernel regressions the side scrolling didn't work on the Vaio Alps touch pad with the newer kernel. Thankfully after a good deal of digging I found my solution on the Linux Answer machine.

To get your side scrolling working again run:

sudo modprobe -r psmousesudo modprobe psmouse proto=imps

Note you will need to run these commands every time you start your computer (unless you add them to somewhere clever such as your /etc/rc.local file).
Cheers,
~Jeff Hoogland

Wednesday, September 28, 2011

So you've taken the plunge and opted to install Bodhi Linux. Perhaps you read a recent review or one of the screen shots in our gallery caught your eye. Either way you've got a newly installed system and you might be wondering what exactly to do next. The following are seven things that are a good idea to do on a cleanly installed Bodhi system.

1.) Check for Updates
Bodhi Linux has a semi-rolling release model. By this we mean you can easily upgrade from one minor version to the next and we continue to push out package updates in between releases. To update your Bodhi install open LXTerminal from your applications menu and run:

sudo apt-get update && sudo apt-get dist-upgrade

Enter your password, press enter and then let APT work it's magic.

2.) Read the Quick Start

There are a lot of hard working people on the Bodhi team that try to bring you the best documentation possible. At the same time we know there is a lot of information to absorb when first using Bodhi. Because of this we have assembled everything you need to know to get started right off the bat in one handy guide.It is well worth taking a short while to look it over.

3.) Install Some Software

One of the things you will note about Bodhi Linux is that we have a minimal application set that gets installed by default. Fear not though - there are two powerful, graphical tools at your disposal for installing more software on Bodhi.

The first is our Application Center. Navigating to this page in the default Midori browser allows you to easily find and install an application for almost every task you can think of with just a few clicks. If you are not certain what software you might need we have assembled to application "packages" that each contain a group of software for making your computer fully functional. Our "Nikhila Application Set" is fully loaded for most any task you can think of and the "Pratibha Application Set" provides a full range of lighter applications that should run quickly even on older computers.

Feel free to take some time to look at all the other software that is listed on the page as well. Maybe even install a game or two.

Can't find what you are looking for on our software page? Don't worry - you can also find Synaptic package manager in your menu which will let you find and install anything in the Bodhi, GetDeb or Ubuntu repositories.

4.) Install Multi-Media Codecs

If you use VLC for your media needs or you only use open source codecs you can skip this step. However if you wish to use a music player such as Clementine or a video player such as mPlayer then you will need to install system wide codecs to support different types of media. You can install media codecs to support almost every media type that exists here. If you also plan to use your Bodhi machine for DVD playback you will also need to install the DVD library from here.

5.) Customize your Appearance

While Bodhi comes with a fairly good range of themes installed by default there are plenty more to be found! You can find over thirty different themes to choose from here.Find the one that best fits you taste/personality. If you are looking for even more customization you can find twenty different icon themes to easily install on your Bodhi system here.

6.) Get to Know Your Profiles

Not to be confused with your "theme", your selection of profile in the Enlightenment desktop determines how your desktop is laid out. When you first installed Bodhi you where asked what type of layout you wanted to have - this was the profile selection. If you come to discover after installing that you don't like your first profile choice (or simply want to try the others), you can easily change it without a reinstall. You can learn how to change profiles and many other things they can do here.

September is almost done and with it's end brings to a close my 24th month of writing Thoughts on Technology.

When I first started writing it was largely so I could document things I had figured out how to do technology related. As time progressed I wrote a few opinion pieces though and they took off. In fact they are now largely what I write, I do still publish HOWTO articles now and then though.

Would just like to say thanks to everyone that reads and comments on my work here. Honestly sometimes the comments are just as good (or better) than my posts :)

Beyond just Thoughts on Technology I have done guest posts (or have feeds) on a few different new websites now:

Tuesday, September 27, 2011

It was recently announced that Windows 8 would support a shiny new feature that is known as "secure boot". In case you have been living with your head under a technological rock for the last couple of weeks, this feature would allow hardware vendors would have the option of only allowing operating systems signed with their secure key to boot on the hardware.

This means that Linux, BSD and even older versions of Windows would not be able to boot on the hardware that ships with secure boot enabled.

A good deal of open source operating system users are upset at this announcement - and with good reason. Having a physical hardware lockout to prevent alternative operating systems from being used is very much bad news bears. Now, before I continue I'd just like to say I do not endorse Microsoft in any way, in fact I don't have any of their software installed on any of my (many personal computers). If you don't believe me take a little bit of a closer look around my blog.

That being said - I think everyone that is crying foul on Microsoft about this whole secure boot thing really needs to reexamine what is going on here.

Microsoft is simply adding a feature to their operating system. What do I mean by pointing this out? Simply that if a market lockout does happen at the hardware level it is the hardware makers you need to be outraged at. Just as easily as they can give their hardware key to Microsoft they can also give it to Linux distributions. In fact it will ultimately be up to the hardware maker whether they have secure boot enabled in their hardware at all.

Meaning that if you are really worried about the future of this feature - start contacting hardware vendors and stop attacking Microsoft for adding a feature to their operating system. In reality only time will tell what will happen with the addition of this feature to Windows 8.

I don't see anyone getting outraged at Google because they allow device makers to lock down ARM hardware. In fact ARM hardware is one of the hardest things around to install an alternative operating system to. Where is the outrage over this if we really want to see true software freedom for all devices?

If you are looking for more reading on this subject check out this excellent post.

So until we see how things pad out just chill out and keep using your favorite penguin powered operating system.

Thursday, September 22, 2011

Linux was designed to be a platform with freedom in mind. This freedom created in the computer industry something all humans should have - the power of choice.

ARM is often touted as one of Linux's largest successes. Thanks to
Google's Android platform it is true that a penguin powers at least half
of the world's mobile devices today.

Is this a bit of a hollow victory though?

Even with Android being as rampant as it is, if you have been by my blog here before you know I am not a fan of it. Earlier this year I described six reasons why I believe Android is fairly separated from Linux.

It appears I am not alone in my line on thinking here. Richard Stallman, the father of free software, himself appears to also agree (at least somewhat) with me:

"Google has complied with the requirements of the GNU General Public Licence for Linux, but the Apache licence on the rest of Android does not require source release. Google has said it will never publish the source code of Android 3.0 (aside from Linux), even though executables have been released to the public. Android 3.1 source code is also being withheld. Thus, Android 3, apart from Linux, is non-free software, pure and simple."

I said earlier Linux is all about choice though - so there have to be other mobile choices right? Well... There are some. In fact over a year ago I wrote why I was hoping for the Meego platform to take off.

Some thirteen months later it appears that the Meego project is waning in
supporters though. While Nokia will be releasing the Meego powered N9 (not to
mention the N9 is deb based, so its not fully Meego), they have basically abandoned free software for the long haul. The other partner behind Meego, Intel, appears to be splitting their focus as well.

So where does that leave Linux on ARM? As far as production devices go, it doesn't leave much of anything. Debian, Ubuntu and even Bodhi have ARM builds, but we have yet to see any of these options taken and mass produced successfully as of yet.

Only time will tell where Linux will end up in the world of mobile devices. It is fairly obvious though if you are a true free software supporter - You should not be one of the people hoping for Android to dominate.

Sunday, September 18, 2011

Ten days ago the Bodhi Team and I released our second update to Bodhi Linux 1.0.0 Today I am happy to let all of our users that have limited or no-internet access machines know that our service pack 2 is ready for download. For those that do not know our service packs allow for a single download upgrade of your Bodhi system from the previous stable release to the current (those still on Bodhi 1.0.0 will need to install service pack 1 followed by service pack 2).

Saturday, September 17, 2011

I've mentioned a few times now that I don't understand this touch infatuation technology has developed in recent years. What ever the reason, there is no doubting this technology is going to be around for some time. In the Linux world the releases of the Gnome 3 and Unity desktops have been pushing a touch-geared interface not only to touch-screen devices, but also the large screen of your home PC! Mac's OSX followed this line of thinking and it appears Microsoft's Window 8 will be no different:

Windows 8 Default Interface

It is still early, but there appears to be one important detail that Microsoft is getting correct that Gnome 3, Unity, and OSX all seem to have failed at.

They are making it easy to switch to a classic desktop.

If Microsoft's choke hold on the market still is any indication we should all know end users are very resistant to change. Up and redesigning the entire desktop experience because you think it is "for the best" is not about to win you any awards.

Sure Ubuntu 11.04 has a "classic desktop" login, but this will be removed in the 11.10 release. Sure Gnome 3 has a "fall back" mode, but you have to dig through settings to get to it and calling it "fall back" makes it sound like something is wrong with your computer if you are using it (which is half true as it is intended for use on systems that lack 3D acceleration). Not to mention this fall back mode supports far less options than Gnome 2 had, but then Gnome 2 also had less customization than Gnome 1, smell a pattern anyone?

So please, Gnome 3 and Unity developers (heck even OSX) take a hint from Windows 8 (because you sure as heck haven't taken any hints from Enlightenment) and make a stand desktop configuration option a priority - not an after thought.

Wednesday, September 14, 2011

Bodhi Linux 1.2.0 has been out of the gate for a full week now and I must say we are truly pleased with the response we have received. There has been a spike of new users present on our forums and our ISO image has seen over 16,000 downloads in this week's worth of time. We have also garnered more than a little bit of notice on Distro Watch, managing to snag the #1 position for the 7 day time span:

Something you may not know is that unlike many Ubuntu derivatives, Bodhi maintains it's own repositories. While these are vital to our operation they are costly. Our operating costs are now over 100 USD per month. My post today is simply to ask that if you are using Bodhi and like what you see please consider sending us a donation.

Well, that is not all this post is about.

If you've stopped by my blog recently then you may know that I recently acquired a Dell Duo while I waited for my Asus tablet to return to a working state. I'd like to offer a little bit of incentive to send us a donation. Starting today for every 5$ you donate to the Bodhi project your name will be entered (EG: 10$ = 2 entries) in a raffle to have a chance to win a less than one month old Dell Inspiron Duo tablet/netbook hybrid pre-configured with Bodhi Linux. The retail value on this unit is 600$.

Tech Specs on the Unit for those interested:

CPU

CPU Type

Intel Atom

CPU Speed

N570(1.66GHz)

Chipset

Chipset

Intel NM10

CPU

CPU L2 Cache

512KB x 2

Display

Screen Size

10.1"

LCD Features

Capacitive Multi-touch technology

Resolution

1366 x 768

Graphics

GPU/VPU

Intel GMA 3150

Video Memory

Shared system memory

Hard Drive

HDD

320GB

HDD RPM

7200rpm

Memory

Memory

2GB

Memory Speed

DDR3 800

Memory Type

204-Pin DDR3 SO-DIMM

Memory Spec

2GB x 1

Memory Slot (Total)

1

Memory Slot (Available)

0

Communications

WLAN

802.11n Wireless LAN

Bluetooth

Bluetooth 3.0

Ports

USB

2

Audio Ports

1 x Microphone jack; 1 x Headphone jack

Audio

Audio

2 X 1W speakers for total of 2W standard

Supplemental Drive

Card Reader

7 in 1 Card Reader with Audio Station Only

Webcam

1.3MP

Power

Battery

4-cell Lithium Ion Battery (29 WHr)

Battery Life

up to 4 hours

Physical spec

Dimensions

11.22" x 7.66" x 1.03" - 1.13"

Weight

3.39 lbs.

I will be holding the window for entries open for at least four weeks and we will not select a winner until we have at least 200 entries. Also, please be aware that if you are selected as the winner and shipping costs from Chicago to your home exceed 50$ you will be expected to cover the excess (50$ should be more than enough, but some countries have outrageous import fees). Included with the tablet is the optional speaker dock.

So, if you have been thinking about sending us a donation then now is the right time! Oh, and in case you missed it our donation page can be found here. If you prefer to send a donation via check instead of paypal please contact me directly for my mailing address. When we do select a winner it will be posted on this blog as well.

Finally, in addition to funding the server costs mentioned above for many months, if this donation drive is successful it will also subsidize the cost of a Trim Slice unit to make the development of Bodhi for ARM more practical.

Tuesday, September 13, 2011

For whatever reason tablets are all the craze this year. The tiny laptops known as "netbooks" that had dominated the couple of years prior are forgotten by many. Those of us that do real work on our computers know the value of having a physical keyboard. At the same time some of us have use for a touch screen, but don't want to carry two physical devices.

Enter the tablet/netbook hybrid. A number of different companies make such devices and I have personally owned ones made by Dell and Asus. Asus actually makes two such devices, you can see them compared here.

Today I would like to compare two 10" netbook/tablet convertables: the Dell Inspiron Duo and the Asus T101MT.

Size and Weight:
The Dell Duo is slightly larger and heavier than the Asus model with dimensions of:

11.22" x 7.66" x 1.03" and weighing 3.39 pounds.

The T101MT comes in at:

10.39" x 7.13" x 1.22" and only 2.86 pounds.

Keyboard:
Both netbooks have chiclet keyboards so typing on both is a pleasant experience. Because the Duo is physically larger though it's keyboard is just a bit bigger. Because of this it has an over all better layout. Even after a full year of usage I still miss hitting the right shift key on the T101MT every now and then because of the keyboard layout.

T101MT Keyboard:

Duo Keyboard:

Screen:

This is the first part we see a large difference between the two devices. The screen on the Asus is a resistive, multi-touch screen with a maximum of 1024x600 resolution. The Dell on the other hand has a capacitive, multi-touch screen which has a slick 1366x768 max resolution. Whether you prefer capacitive to resistive may be the deciding factor on these two devices for you.

Keep this in mind though. I personally use the touch screen largely for taking written notes. A resistive screen is much better suited for this purpose. 40$ and three capacitive stylus's later I have yet to find one that is as accurate/as good as using generic resistive stylus for such a task.

Ports:
External ports is the one area where hands down the T101MT crushes the Duo. The Duo only has three ports: 2 USB and an audio out. The T101MT on the other hand has pretty much what you would expect from a netbook. 3 USB, audio out, microphone in, SD card reader and VGA.

Thats right - they couldn't even squeeze an HDMI mini onto the Duo.

AC Adapter:
This may seem like an odd thing to mention, but the T101MT does have a much better AC adapter. The Duo power brick comes with a short cord by default and does not have a light on the brick letting you know it is on. The T101MT also comes with Velcro ties by default for packing up the adapter neatly.

Over All Design:

Dell and Asus both make pretty solid hardware. I haven't owned the Duo for quite as long yet, but I can say is built at least as solid as the T101MT is. While the Duo is a bit larger, there is no doubting it has a certain "sleek" factor to it with the clamshell design and the screen that flips back instead of spinning around.

Dell Duo

Asus T101MT

Processor:

The current versions of the T101MT ship with the exact same Intel Atom N570 that the Duo has. The N570 is a 1.66ghz dual core with hyper threading. Take note if you are buying a used T101MT that some of the first wave of these units had the older N450 atom chip in them.

RAM:

The Duo has one RAM slot and by default comes with a 2gig stick of DDR3 800mhz. The T101mt comes in two different revisions currently. The higher end T101MT comes with 2gigs DDR3 1066mhz (two 1gig sticks). The lower end T101MT comes with 1gig DDR2 by default (that can be upgraded to two).

Hard Drive:
By default both laptops make the choice of coming with a platter hard drive. The Duo comes with a 320gig 7200rpm drive. The higher end T101MT comes with a 320gig 5400rpm drive and the lower end model comes with a 250gig.

As someone who firmly believes hard drives with moving parts are a piss poor idea in both tablets and netbook I have replaced the drives in both units. In this respect, both units are poorly designed. With the T101MT you need to tear apart almost the entire unit to get to the drive. The Duo requires, not quite as much, but still a good deal of work to get at it's drive. If you are not someone that works on mobile hardware on a regular basis I would not recommend doing this upgrade yourself.

Webcam:

If you care about your webcam quality the Duo might be the right pick for you. The Duo sports a 1.3 mega-pixel camera, while the T101MT has a piddly 0.3 mega-pixel.

Bluetooth:

The Duo has an internal bluetooth module while the T101MT does not.

Battery:

The battery life of the two systems is fairly close. With the stock drive right under three hours of normal use is about average on both units. If you pop a solid state drive into either machine it increase to almost four hours. Also worth noting is that the T101MT has a removable/replaceable battery while the Duo needs to be torn apart to replace the battery.

Operating System:
Both these units come with copies of Windows 7 by default. You are not stuck with this OS though. Linux works equally well on both the Duo and the T101MT.

Cost:
The Dell Duo is right around 600$ (depending on where you purchase it from) and the higher end T101MT is close to this, right around 550$. If you are looking to pay a bit less than this the lower end T101MT comes in 100$ less around 450$.

Final Thoughts:
I'm not going to say here which unit is better. As with many things the answer to this question is "it depends". It depends on what you are looking for, it depends on what you need and it depends on what you are looking to spend. Hopefully my summary here will help you choose which of these two units is right for you though!

Something that has always annoyed me about a good deal of netbooks is the fact that someone decided that 1024x600 was an acceptable maximum resolution. While this isn't always an issue, it becomes extra annoying when you attach an external display to your tiny computer. By default your are typically forced into one of two choices:

1.) You run both screens in 800x600, rendering over 20% of your netbook's internal display useless.

2.) You run the external screen at 1024x768 and the internal screen at 1024x600 and have the bottom 168 pixels show up on the external display, but not on the netbook.

Something many people don't know about is that the display tool xrandr has a really nifty "scale" option you can utilize to make your netbook's screen behave as though it has a higher resolution than it really does. For instance if you have the second case I mention above you simply need to run the command:

in terminal (note your internal display name may vary, most laptops default to LVDS1 though). After running this you will see your netbook display adjust itself so the height of 768 is smushed into it's normal 600 units. This appear a small bit stretched in this mode, but so long as you don't get too crazy with the scale factor it is hardly noticeable.

Sunday, September 11, 2011

I've been going through somerounds with Asus tech support/customer service the last couple of months. Two RMA's and a brand new unit later, I have resolved the issue. I must admit it is a slightly embarrassing fix. It is a true example of making a mountain out of a mole hill in the technology industry.

I can't believe I missed this fix for so long, I can't believe my older brother who works on computers didn't think of it sooner, but really - I'm pissed off that the Asus repair facility didn't think of this before replacing the motherboard and screen in the netbook.

This morning I had the bright idea to boot up the T101mt again, but this time after I hit the power button I press function+f6 to toggle the brightness setting on the screen up. Sure enough the screen clicked right back on.

I don't think I have ever felt so stupid. It appears the recently added backlight code for Enlightenment was simply turning of the T101MT's internal display by default.

This is just a friendly reminder to everyone else out there that when debugging something - don't just skip over the lowest common denominator. It could save you a world of headache.

Thursday, September 8, 2011

I recently set out to get a new tablet/netbook combo. After reading many reviews about different models I settled on a Dell Inspiron Duo. One thing you will find most all of the Inspiron reviews have in common is that they mention the touch software layer running on Windows 7 is slow. If I said this surprised me it would be a lie. With this in mind I set out to get the Enlightenment desktop running on this device in a cool way. Below is a video of the Enlightenment desktop via Bodhi Linux 1.2.0 running on my Dell Duo:

If you'd like to create a similar setup on your own Duo simply install Bodhi (or any distro with a current E build) and then follow the instructions I detailed here. Then under your key bindings add detection for the screen changing states. Under Action select Launch->Command in the Action Params put the command:

enlightenment_remote -default-profile-set ProfileName

Note when selecting the profile name it needs to be the exact name that is listed for that profile in your ~/.e/e/config directory. Otherwise Enlightenment will crash in a bad way.Have any questions or comments feel free to drop a message below.

This post is as much an open poll of those that know their way around hardware as much as it is a warning to others that own an Asus T101MT.

If you have been by my blog recently you may know that I have been going back and forth with Asus support getting an RMA done on my T101MT. I sent the unit in with a bad screen, it got returned had the same issue happen again, it got RMAed again and had the same issue happen a third time. Assuming something was simply wrong with the unit I had beyond repair, I was sent a 100% new unit.

The first thing I do with any new computer I buy is wipe out the default operating system and install Linux. The T101MT was no exception. I installed the latest variation of Bodhi Linux which is powered by the 3.0.0 kernel and much to my surprise two boots later the brand new T101MT had the exact same screen issue as the previous unit I had.

Now the Bodhi team and I don't do anything crazy with our kernel configurations. In fact, our kernel builds currently come directly upstream from Ubuntu packagers. So if you are using Linux on a T101MT a word of warning - I would not upgrade to the 3.0 kernel any time soon (or a distro that uses it).

Finally, my question to any hardware exerts out there that might be reading this. Is it possible to Linux to cause the internal display of a laptop to stop working (read: It isn't just the GUI or TTYs I can't get up, the system doesn't even post a BIOS screen on it's internal display)? If so, any ideas how or why this could be happening? The unit(s) work 100% fine when attached to an external monitor, so I know the hardware is all working minus the internal screen.

My brain is screaming at me that software should be able to kill hardware like this, but I am running out of debugging options.

EDIT/Update:

I got an external display setup this evening. So I booted it up, logged into the BIOS and cleared the
settings back to defaults - poof! My internal display worked again. Well
for a few moments anyways.

Every time E starts the internal display in my netbook cuts out if
it is the only display attached. In order to get it to come back online
again I have to default all my bios settings again. I can tracked the
issue back to something E is doing because the internal display does not
freak out when using LXDE/OpenBox on the same system. The odd thing is
the internal display works fine with E if I have an external screen
attached at the same time.

So in short, Enlightenment is doing something that at startup (when only the internal display is active) that disables the internal display at a BIOS level. I've spoken with E developers and the are of the opinion that nothing like this should be possible. I am throughly baffled, will have to run some more tests this weekend...

Any feedback/ideas are welcome and would be appreciated. I'm going to be fiddling around with the units some more in the next week to see if I can figure anything out myself.

20,000 forum posts and over 100,000 downloads later the Bodhi team and I are proud to announce our second point release - Bodhi 1.2.0 Current Bodhi users can easily update their system to this latest release. This release is largely for keeping packages up to date, so the following are the core system packages that have been updated for this release:

Linux 3.0.0Enlightenment built from SVN on 09/06/11Midori 0.4.0

As many current Bodhi users know, we often update software in our repository. Just some of our recent software updates include:

Firefox 6.0Chromium 13Opera 11.51 nVidia 280.13

Speaking of repositories, we have been including the awesome GetDeb repo by default in Bodhi since our early releases. These repositories serve many people and often have bandwidth issues. Because of this we are now hosting our own mirror of GetDeb that will be used by default. Those with current Bodhi installs can update their sources.list to use the Bodhi mirror by replacing their current GetDeb line with the following:

deb http://getdeb.bodhilinux.com/getdeb lucid-getdeb apps games

There is more to this release than just packages though. Our document team has been working furiously to improve our docs, both on our wiki and our locally installed pages. Our Quick Start guide gained Dutch as a language this release, bringing out total number of languages to eleven. Our recently published "Bodhi Guide to Enlightenment" is also now stored locally for offline use in the Midori web browser.

In terms of functionality all of our default profiles have undergone minor changes to improve the user experience. The largest of which have gone into the fancy and tablet profiles. The fancy profile now has some penguins on your desktop by default and the tablet profile gained a sleek, touch friendly method of changing between applications.We have also added a new default profile with this release - Tiling. It has the tiling module enabled by default to make organizing the windows on your desktop take far less time.

Finally, one of the things that sets E apart from other desktops are it's choices of wonderful themes. Bodhi 1.2.0 brings with it seven new default themes for the desktop. The default E theme got a fresh new wall paper. Also included are Angelic2, Blue Angel, Migeul, Mystery, Passion and finally Smoke.

Oh, and of course download links! You can grab the high speed torrent download (recommend!) here or can find our direct download hosted by source forge here. Also - don't forget to vote in our desktop of the week contest. Our winning desktop from last week:

Have any questions/input/ideas feel free to drop a comment below as always.

Edit/Update: We are raffling off a Bodhi Linux powered Tablet/Netbook.

Search Blog

About Me

My name is Jeff Hoogland and you've landed on one of my Google pages. I currently work as adjunct faculty teaching mathematics at ITT Technical Institute in Springfield IL. I am a free software advocate and part time code jockey. You can learn more about me from my personal website.

Contact

About this Website

Thoughts on Technology is a collection of my own original writings about computers, hardware, software, and all forms of technology in the world around us today. I ask that you please do not repost my works without permission, but if you wish to please feel free to link back to my website here.

Donate

If you would like to support my projects with a financial donation you can do so via the button below.